


Mutually Assured Salvation

by Ias



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Heaven, Hell, apparently I have a lot of feelings about Naomi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 13:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heaven and Hell teeter on the brink of war, but the work of an angel and a demon promises to change that. One way, or another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mutually Assured Salvation

**Author's Note:**

> So this is pretty much going to be jossed immediately, but I just wanted to take this opportunity to explore some potentials with Naomi. I just really want the show to explore her motivations and flesh out her character instead of immediately turning her into the dastardly villain. There's a lot of potential there, I think. 
> 
> As always, thanks to my beta[Margo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim). You may take the fruit and fat of the land at any time you choose. Wow, these dedications are getting weirder and weirder.

Naomi touches down on the smooth marble of a hotel in Las Vegas. The lobby is empty, a result of the demons standing at a cautious distance around the exterior. She eyes them with a cold stare, but ultimately ignores them. For the moment, they are insignificant. 

That doesn’t stop her from smiting the single demon which approaches her with a request that she step this way, please. Her hand is a searing electrical pulse in the middle of his human forehead, reaching inside to carve out the blackness and replace it with blinding light. She has no need of simpering attendants to show her the way. Enochian sigils scrawl across the wallpaper and paneling on every surface except the elevator. Stepping past them causes a prickle to cascade through her grace, their magic pressing in on her at all sides. There is only one way open to her. The elevator doors close without her command and the button for the twentieth floor lights up. 

A moment later Naomi steps out into a lavish apartment, her footsteps echoing on the veined, ruddy stone, the lights dim enough to leave the shadows lush. The same Enochian is tucked in unobtrusive corners through this room as well, meant to protect and dampen her power but not to bar her way. The décor here reeks of luxury, all deep colors and gold trim and polished stone. She eyes it with curiosity, but mostly with distaste. It seemed that Hell has begun taken its license for decadence a little too much to heart. 

Across the room a man is sitting on the cream-colored sofa with a glass of wine cradled in his fingers. He wears a dark suit and seems intent on staring through the floor-length windows at the cityscape outside. He has not acknowledged Naomi’s presence. 

She pauses a few feet away, her hands held stiffly at her side. “Crowley.” 

Now he turns, slowly and without the fear that he should owe to her. He slowly rises to his feet and dons an insolent smirk, an expression which comes all too easily to him. 

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t our dear Nurse Ratched herself. I must say, I didn’t expect you to come.” 

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t smite you where you stand,” she says. Her patience for Crowley’s games is as thin as the metaphorical ice on which he stands. Though with all his bold mannerisms, he doesn’t seem to realize it himself. 

His eyes flick over her briefly before settling on her face. “True, you could kill me. And I,” the silver glint of an angel blade emerged from his jacket, “would have decent shot at killing you too. But as satisfying as that would be for both of us, I have a different suggestion.” With that, he slowly sets the weapon on a small glass end table. 

Naomi forces herself to tear her eyes off it and meet Crowley’s stare. He takes her silence as some form of agreement, begrudging as it was, and plunges on. 

“So it seems a much greater game is afoot than either of our sides could have anticipated. Even with the apocalypse, the only thing hanging in the balance was the fate of the earth. But now,” he smiled tightly, “it seems that the fight has been taken closer to home than I’m sure both of us are comfortable with.” 

“Of course you would say that,” Naomi says. “We already have the demon tablet.” 

“Yes you do,” he allows. “How is that translation going, by the way? I’m sure Kevin’s almost cracked it by now.” 

Naomi’s face gives nothing away, but Crowley smiles. “Well then. Not only have you made little progress on the demon tablet, but I also now know the angel tablet exists. And ask yourself this: is this a risk you really want to take? Before you answer, consider. If you lose, that’s it. Game over. As lovely as your Castle in the Sky may be, something tells me you don’t want to spend the rest of eternity imprisoned there. And even if you win, that won’t change the fact that there’s an angel tablet floating around on the market. And demon’s aren’t the only ones who’d like to see you out of the picture.” 

Naomi shifts restlessly. It surprises her how easy wearing this form has become, not just controlling it but inhabiting it. Sometimes she feels the tremble of her vessel’s heartbeat or smells the detergent from her clothes. Such details disturb her. “What do you want, Crowley?” 

Crowley sets his wine glass down and begins meandering around the furniture until there is nothing between them but open air. “What I am proposing,” he says, coming to stop a healthy distance away and tucking his hands into his pockets. “is that we make a little deal.” 

“Do you take me for a Winchester? I will not parlay with demons,” she snarls, self-righteousness a familiar curl at the end of her tongue. 

Crowley’s face darkens. “I’m sorry, but are you speaking on ethics here? Remind me again who it was that ordered the death of everyone’s favorite burger-flipping angel, who’s been pulling poor Castiel’s strings since the moment he set foot outside of Purgatory? If there’s anyone with the right to take a moral stance on this issue, it sure as Hell isn’t you.”

“I had no choice,” she says, a bit of the venom leaking out of her voice. “Everything I did, I did to protect my brothers and my sisters from yet another cataclysm.” Her mouth twists unbidden. “There are few enough of us left worth protecting, after all.”

Crowley raises his eyebrows. “And you think that going to war with Hell is going to somehow keep them safe? Because if you’re under the impression that we’re just going to lie down and conveniently die for you, I’m not sorry to say you’re mistaken.” He steps forward. “If we’re going down, we’re going to take every one of you feathery arseholes that we can get our hands on with us. And that’s a guarantee.” 

Naomi turns away. “I didn’t come here to take threats from you.” 

 

A hand grips her arm to stop her. “And I didn’t invite you to listen to them,” Crowley says from just behind her. The smell of burning snaps through the air as Crowley whips his hand back, giving the singed appendage an irritable shake. The burns from Naomi’s surge of grace quickly disappear under a sheen of new skin.

Her rebuff does little else to deter him. “At least let me explain my proposal to you. Then you can either return to your over-zealous posturing, or decide to listen to reason.” 

He gestures to a plush armchair, and after a moment Naomi sinks down into it. Not for a moment does she let herself relax. Demons are fickle creatures; almost as dangerous as angels. Crowley takes a seat across from her, the wineglass reappearing in his hand as he regards her over its rim. 

“So,” he says. “It seems we’re at a crossroads, you and I. We either drag each other off this cliff and ensure one or both of our destruction, or we sit down and settle this like civilized bastards before anyone so much as singes their feathers. Well, no one that you haven’t already taken care of.” 

Naomi grits her teeth against the storm of protests and defenses that surges in the back of her throat. There’s no need for her to defend her actions to this demon, yet she still feels the urge to. Such sentimentality is unnerving. “What are you proposing?” 

“A truce,” Crowley says. “Plain and simple. I’ll agree to stop searching for the angel tablet, and you agree to throw the demon tablet back into whatever nameless pit Dick dragged it up out of. We go back to doing our thing: I do my evil little dance, and you run around trying to stop my fun. Neither of us wins, but more importantly neither of us loses.” 

Naomi smiles coolly and shakes her head. “And how are we to know you’ll honor your end of the bargain? Your word as a demon?” 

“First off, my word is as good as gold, love,” Crowley says. “Secondly, I’m not an idiot. I don’t trust you lot any more than you fail to trust me. So we do this the official way.” 

Leaning back, Naomi regards him shrewdly. “A deal.” 

“Indeed.” 

“I was under the impression that a contract only held for a mortal soul.” 

“Being King of Hell has its perks,” Crowley says. “I can bend the rules a tad. I guarantee that the magic will be just as binding as it would between me and a human.”

Naomi doesn’t respond immediately. The idea intrigues her. Under the threat of such magic, there would be no chance that Crowley would find some way of wriggling out. Of course that would force Naomi to keep her word as well, a prospect which she finds less appealing. 

“If I refuse, what then?” Naomi asks. 

“Then you walk out of here completely unharmed, and no one ever knows about our little meeting,” Crowley responds. “I may not be an honorable man, but I can play the part when I need to. This get-together was promised to be safe, and safe you’ll stay.” 

As if Crowley stood a chance of killing her. Even with her grace dampened under the weight of the angel sigils, Naomi can defeat him. She did not earn her high position in the garrisons of heaven by strumming a harp. For millions of years she has been a soldier; Crowley has scarcely existed for a fraction of that. Still, as inferior as he is to her in every way imaginable, he may still be of use. 

Naomi rises to her feet, a restlessness prickling in her grace. Walking to the window, she pauses a few inches from the glass, so close that her breath made swirls and clouds that dissolved away as quickly as they formed. Outside is the city; in her true form she could have crossed it in five mighty steps, but in this moment it appears so large. She tries to imagine what it would be like to never see such things again, confined behind the walls of heaven. 

She’s never had much of a taste for walking the mortal plane, but to be fair she’s rarely had the chance. Her duties are in heaven, and her last mission to Earth hasn’t been since the journey of Marco Polo. Yet it’s only taken a brief period in this body to feel like she’s grown up in it. It is a strange experience, and a frightening one, but it provides a unique perspective. One that she is not eager to lose. 

And then there is the rest of the Host to consider. Is she to wantonly put their lives and freedom in danger for the sake of her pride? Or was treating with Crowley the true betrayal here? The coolness of the glass radiates against her face; she wishes she could burst through it and into the free air, where perhaps she would have the space to think clearly. But as much as a comfort flying would be, this is not the time. 

“Well?” Crowley says from behind her. “Did you want to brood a bit longer, or are you ready to stop a war?” 

Naomi turns to face him. A scrap of paper is pinched in his fingers, an impatient scowl on his face. She steps forward.

“You will add an additional clause,” she says. “Your demons will work to exterminate any who have come to gain knowledge of the angel tablet’s existence.”

Crowley does not look impressed. “And why can’t you do it?” he says icily. “Is heaven too lazy to clean up its own messes now?”

“Any that dies by an angel’s hand will attract attention. When demons kill, no one questions it.” She stares him down. “Those are my terms. If Hell has developed a quandary with murder, then feel free to call the deal off.” 

Crowley’s face tightens, but with a curt jab of his fingers an addition line of text appears on the document. “Fine. You’ll find all the typical confidentiality clauses in here, as well. Can’t be seen parlaying with you bird brains.” 

“I fully intend to take this secret to my eventual and metaphorical grave,” she says, pulling the contract from Crowley’s hand to read over it. She finishes in a matter of seconds and, surprisingly, finds no twist of a phrase or hidden article mean to entrap her. That in itself is suspicious—whenever a demon does not try to deceive you, it is wise to start getting worried. 

Yet there is no backing down now. Unclenching her fist, she reaches out to take the pen that Crowley offers her. She bends down to smooth the paper across the tabletop and scrawl her mark across the bottom. The word in Enochian shimmers with the faint white glow of grace, and the contract seems to expand slightly with a preparatory breath. It is active. 

Crowley inspects her signature. “Nice penmanship,” he quips. A second later his name joins hers, a scrawl of Enochian with far too many unnecessary flourishes. The paper rustles and hisses like cooling metal as the magic takes effect. Naomi can feel it around them, a humming in the air that swirls around her imperceptible wings and settles about her like a mantle of snow. Crowley rolls his shoulders as if to dislodge it. 

“Wonderful,” he says. “Now that the paperwork’s over with, we can seal the deal and be on our merry way.” With that, he steps directly into Naomi’s personal space and presses his lips to hers. She nearly smites him right then and there until she realizes what he’s doing, and even then she can scarcely restrain herself until he pulls away with a coy smile. The force around them seems to dissipate with the sealing of the bargain, though she can still sense it.

“Not much for romance, are we?” he says, his lips twitching. 

“Are we done?” Naoimi asks coldly. 

Crowley shrugs. “Almost. I have one question first.” 

“I didn’t come here to make small talk. The deal is struck.” 

“That it is. But answer me this first: Why did you do it?” 

“Do what?” 

“Agree to make peace.” Crowley crosses his arms over his chest and regards her thoughtfully. “Don’t get me wrong, I called this meeting in all hope and seriousness that you would consider my offer. But that doesn’t mean I thought you’d actually do it.” 

Naomi pauses. She considers simply walking out of the apartment and leaving it at that. After all, she owes Crowley nothing she hasn’t already promised, and there is much in heaven for her to arrange. But something stops her. 

“For them,” she says finally. “For those of us that are left. So that they might keep their lives.” 

“That can’t be the only reason.” 

“You were not there,” she snaps. “You did not see the decimation of heaven. I stepped into the garden where once a soul had found ultimate serenity, and found the ground charred with the bodies of my brothers and sisters; so many of us fallen that there was more charred ground than green.” She shakes her head. “I will guard what is left of us, no matter what that takes.” 

Crowley nods. “Lost someone special, did you?” 

“Of course I did, you imbecile. We all did.” 

“Touchy, touchy. A lover, then?” He frowns. “Or would that technically be incest?” 

Naomi grinds her teeth. “Her name was Leah. And Rachel. And Raziel. And Gregori. I could list only half of those close to me now lost forever, and this building would have tumbled to dust around us.”

“Well well. No wonder you’ve been riding dear Castiel so hard. Looking for a bit of revenge, are we?” When Naomi opens her mouth Crowley cuts her off. “Please, don’t think I mean that as an insult. I love a good bit of blood-for-blood myself. In fact…” Suddenly another piece of paper appears in his hand, “I may be able to do something about that.” 

Words die on Naomi’s tongue, and Crowley’s smile splits wider. “It’s what you’ve wanted, isn’t it? After all, you can’t very well go putting a blade through Castiel’s heart. That might send the wrong message about Heaven’s new ‘forgiveness’ vibe. Don’t get me wrong, your work so far has been very clever; getting Castiel on the wrong side of the Winchesters would be a great way to conveniently take him out. Anything that stands up in front of the Winchesters doesn’t stay standing for long, I’ve learned.

“You’ve forgotten something, though. You see, the Winchesters won’t simply kill him and be done with it. They’re far too attached to him for that. No, I think they’ll come after you, and they’ll rip your wings out feather-by-feather until you undo whatever it is you’ve done to their favorite angel. And I’d imagine that’s not an ending you’d be altogether happy with. While my ending, on the other hand, is one I guarantee you will.” 

He gestures at the contract. “So. What do you say we work something out?” 

Naomi narrows her eyes. “What more do you want?” 

Crowley pretends to think about it for a moment. “Hmm, well, let’s see… how about… the demon tablet.” 

“No.” Naomi doesn’t have to deliberate. 

“You can keep the prophet, and have my word that Hell will not go looking for him at that. We just want the bloody rock.” 

“What use would it be to you without any means of reading it?” Naomi demands. “I’m not stupid. You have some ulterior motive.” 

Crowley glances around the room. “Can you blame me for feeling a bit jumpy, knowing that the angels still have half the means to lock the doors to Hell and throw away the key?” 

“You have my word, under contract, that we will do no such thing.”

“Exactly. The tablet is useless to you, and without the prophet I can’t use it either. We both get to rest a little easier, me knowing no feathery douche is going to jam a chair under the door while I sleep, and you knowing that the bastard who killed your friends is an ashy smear on the ground.” 

For the first time in a long time, Naomi feels temptation. Not for the good of the Host or the sake of the Earth; no, this time she weighs Crowley’s words because she, personally, wants what he was offering. Clearly he can see her uncertainty, because he sidles up with a winning smile on his face and dangles the paper in front of her eyes. 

“How about it, love?” he says. “One deep-fried traitor with extra justice on the side?” 

Naomi thinks of the garden, strewn with dead angels. This time when she imagines their faces she puts Castiel in their place—his bright blue eyes thrown wide open in shock, a mirror to the sky. The thought gives her no joy. 

“No,” she says at last. “We’re done here.” Turning away from Crowley’s quickly souring face, she strides back towards the elevator and the release from the sigils that lay at the bottom. There is a chance that Crowley might still try to kill her, now that he’s won his truce with Heaven; but the only thing that needles at her back is his sudden words. 

“That’s it then?” he snaps. “You’ll just let that monster walk free, after all that he did?” 

“Enough angels have died already. The life of one more, no matter how broken, will do no good.” Naomi pauses. “And I have had enough of killing.” 

“You and Castiel aren’t so different,” Crowley says, his words coming fast and barbed. “I would know. We kept close company for a while there, as you might remember. And let me tell you, I see the same ambition in your eyes that made a murderer out of him.” She hears Crowley laugh. “And here you are, fraternizing with demons. Seems like heaven can’t seem to find anyone for a management position that isn’t already broken. I imagine it won’t be long before it suffers the consequences again.”

With that, the elevator doors snap shut and send her falling back down to Earth, the whirr of the machinery the only sound. Naomi lets it go, ignoring the pit in her stomach. Even now her unwanted emotions betray her.

When she reaches the ground floor and steps into the lobby, she can finally loosen her wings. As expected, the demons which had been guarding the outside of the building have formed a ring around the elevator, angel-swords in hand. They mean to kill her. Naomi obliterates them with a single stroke of her wings, melting their holy weapons into puddles of silver on the floor. The next moment she is gone. 

Finding heaven from Earth is like slipping through a curtain. She finds herself back in that familiar room, with its soothing blues and cool metals. Everything here is clinical, with no footholds for emotions to fester. All the same, she fears she has brought enough of those with her. 

She sinks into her chair on the other side of the desk and closes her eyes. Finding serenity is no easy exercise, but it is one she has grown quite accustomed to. Crowley, of course, had not been wrong. After Castiel scoured heaven, the anguish had struck fast and hard, opening up a crack for other things to funnel in. The more she tried to crush down these new feelings the more they swelled up over her. She understood all too well how Castiel could have fallen. They were as heady as a flight through the Medusa Nebula. 

But there was one vital difference between the two of them; Castiel had given in to his passions, while Naomi is tied to her grief. It weighs her down like an anchor, one she knows would never let her drift away as Castiel had. 

She laces her fingers. There is one more thing that she has to do. Extending her grace, she calls for Castiel. 

He appears seconds later, his brow furrowed with that typical confusion. Eventually his eyes find her. “Naomi.” 

“Castiel.” Her mouth tightens around the name, and for a moment she wonders if she had made the right choice in denying Crowley’s second offer. Castiel isn’t like the rest of them; he treasures his emotions, bucks authority, and then seeks to seize it for his own. She smiles ruefully. They truly weren’t’ so different after all. After all, Naomi had not come into her power through idleness. She had struggled for her position, and that had taken ambition. But while she found herself with more emotions than may have been proper, she would always prefer not to feel. 

Castiel takes a step towards her. “Why have you brought me here?” 

She turns her attention back to the strange, sad creature in front of her. How he had changed since the old days. The apocalypse had changed them all. 

“Your service is no longer required for us,” she says. “We’re cutting you free.” 

Castiel frowns. “Why?” 

“That is not your concern.” 

He looks like he is about to argue, but seems to think the better of it. “Are you sending me back to Purgatory?” 

Naomi pauses. “No,” she says eventually. “Go to the Winchesters. You don’t have to stay, if you do not want. But go.” 

Castiel needs no more prompting than that. A flutter of wings, and he is gone. With any luck his return would appease Winchesters enough to protect her. If not, it would hardly matter. They would never find her. 

She stands up. There are explanations she will need to make, excuses and evasions and chiefly among them, lies. Such is the price of peace, and she will pay it gladly.


End file.
